Five times Sherry Birkin saved Jake Muller
by Hickumu
Summary: ...and one time he returned the favor.
1. by stealing a snowmobile

Soldiers of fortune didn't get to choose how they died. Therefore, Jake had never really let himself consider the possibility of how it might happen before. What was the point?

He thought that, if he had, freezing to death would have been low on the list. Edonia could be cold in the winter, but there was usually shelter to be found, and he knew his way around city streets.

This wasn't "cold". This was a snowstorm. This was a _blizzard_, and Jake could barely see a foot in front of his face. He wasn't dressed for this, or prepared to survive in this. And Sherry was gone.

Looking for her had probably only gotten him more lost. Calling out for her had probably only drawn more J'avo to him, but that was all right, because beating them to death had been a good way to keep his blood pumping and his heart racing. Now, however, all was quiet, except for the howling of the wind and the whisper of the snow.

"Christ," Jake muttered, and he barely heard his own voice before the wind tore it away. He forced himself to keep walking, step after step, even as he shivered violently and felt important bits of him going numb with cold. "I think I'd pay fifty million just for a hot pot of coffee right about now."

Uphill. The cabin had been uphill from where they'd started. If he could just get to it, he could warm up, get some feeling back in his fingers, and regroup before going out and looking for Sherry again. Even if it was just to retrieve her frostbitten, bullet riddled corpse, he'd probably need something to take back to her bosses, or he wasn't going to get paid.

She was probably okay, though. She was probably miserable and even more hopelessly lost that he was, but she was probably okay. She was superhuman, after all – if getting impaled through the spine wouldn't put her down, a few bullets probably wouldn't either. Jake found himself cheered by the thought. It had been stupid enough to lose her. If he'd gotten her killed by losing sight of her, it would have been a sign he was losing his touch.

Jake sucked in a breath through frozen lungs to try again. "Sherry!" he yelled. Just because she was alive didn't mean she was okay. He had to find her and drag her to safety.

He was answered, but like so many times before, it wasn't the answer he'd been looking for. The response to his cry was a red light, lancing through the darkness, skittering across the snow and up his body to settle on his chest. Jake attributed his delay in leaping out of the way to the cold in his legs.

The shot rang out just as he hit the snow rolling. The bullet sent up a spray of snow, which mingled with the blizzard to briefly cut visibility even further. He couldn't trust that fact would stop the bastard from taking another shot, though.

Jake tried to think quickly. Everything had been moving too quickly for him to tell which way the bullet had come from, and in this sort of environment, the firing of the gun had echoed too much for him to use that either. Getting back up would only make him a target, so Jake stayed flat, and tried not to breathe, and kept his eyes on the snow around him for any sign of the red light of a sniper taking aim.

Seconds ticked by, and then minutes. His unseen assailant obviously didn't want to waste a bullet. They were trusting that he'd get up eventually, or make a move to give his position away.

They were probably right. It was that, or freeze. Jake gritted his teeth, and by now even clenching his fists made the joints in his fingers hurt. He was freezing where he lay – letting snow get blown over him would probably make for great cover, but only because there was no point in shooting a dead man.

If they'd just take another shot at him now, he'd probably be able to dodge it, and get an idea of where to charge in for the attack. _Come on, asshole,_ Jake thought to himself. _What's life without a little risk? I'm right here, come and get me! _

But J'avo were smart enough to operate a sniper rifle, and apparently smart enough to know how best to put it to use. His attacker just waited. Or maybe he wasn't waiting. Maybe he'd gone. Maybe…

No, thinking like that had gotten more than a few soldiers like him killed. Snipers were patient, or they had no business being snipers. He'd be dressed for this weather, while Jake wasn't. All he had to do was wait, and he wouldn't have to wait long. He'd trust that Jake would eventually crack and make a mad charge, rather than freeze on the ground like a dog.

_He's right, too_.

But just as Jake was preparing to surge back to his feet and make one last go of it, a familiar roar made itself heard over the blizzard, and twin beams of light sliced through the darkness up ahead. Jake knew a snowmobile when he heard it, especially since it wasn't the first time they'd turned up here, ridden by J'avo looking to run them down.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Jake yelled, not even bothering to be silent, now. If they didn't know where he was, there was a good chance that the snowmobile would run right over him anyway. He scrambled to his feet, going for his 909 to take aim. His chances of shooting the driver off the snowmobile weren't good, but he took aim anyway. "Ain't no kill like overkill, is that it?"

The roar of the snowmobile's engine grew louder. The lights flew closer. Jake squinted against the snow, taking aim.

There was a squishy, organic sort of sound that Jake recognized as a body meeting the grill of a vehicle going at speed, and the body losing. A grunt of pain was abruptly cut off by another rev of the engine, and a more pronounced squish. Miraculously, Jake was still standing, gun drawn and readied. The sound had come from about five feet to his left.

It was the shock of this sudden change in fortunes that stopped him firing anyway, which proved to be a good thing. The next thing he heard was Sherry's voice, calling his name. Jake quickly put two and two together, and felt his face split in a grin.

"Hell yeah!" he cried, hurrying over to the headlights. Sure enough, there sat Sherry Birkin in the driver's seat, apparently unhurt, backing away from the mangled lump of flesh and blood that had until thirty seconds ago been a sniper. She looked up at the sound of his running footsteps, and smiled in unmistakable relief.

"Thank god," she said. "I thought I'd lost you. Hop on, and I'll get us to that cabin. You look like you could use a warm up."

Practicality briefly warred with machismo, and proceeded to stomp its face in. "You got that right." Jake got on behind her, and after a moment's hesitation, leaned forward to wrap his arms around her waist. She felt warm, and he let out a soft sigh of relief. "You sure you can find the way back through all this?"

"Yep." Sherry pushed a button on her phone, lighting it up and revealing its position tucked into the dashboard. "I left the microchips back there, hidden under the floorboards. As long as we head towards them, we'll find the cabin."

"Not bad, super girl." Indeed, Jake didn't even have to try and sound appreciative. That was a clever little hack that would work to stop them getting lost all over again now that they'd found one another. "I don't suppose you wanna earn my eternal gratitude by telling me you found something to eat in there?"

"How do field rations sound? I got a fire going to soften them up."

Sherry revved up the engine and started back without waiting for him to respond. Jake responded anyway. "Compared to some of the other shit I've had to eat in a bind? It doesn't sound half bad."

Jake kept his arms around her waist as they drove – his mother had taught him to be a gentleman, after all. After a while, he found himself leaning his head against her back. And then maybe it was something about the persistent, hypnotic rumble of the engine, or the way the snow whispered around them like they were trapped in a tacky novelty snowglobe, or the warmth of her that spoke of a roaring fire, but Jake dozed off and didn't wake up until she brought the snowmobile to a stop in front of the cabin.

* * *

_Maybe I have a slightly different perspective on Sherry because I was playing as her (it seems like most of the fandom hasn't), but I really didn't get the Distressed Damsel vibe most of the playerbase seems to have gotten. I instead got the impression that Sherry has supremely bad luck and everything in the universe is out to get her. It's not that she gets grabbed in the Standard Female Grab Area and she's suddenly useless. It's that she's the one who happens to be first within reach when Ustanak comes marching out of the cave to punch her rib cage out through her mouth. _

_Honestly, I thought Sherry was pretty badass in her own right. When Jake looked at her at the end of their campaign and said, "Hey. You saved me. Thank you", I didn't see that as anything weird at all. It was unexpected, just because I didn't think they'd have the big bad soldier of fortune bother to acknowledge her efforts, but I knew Sherry and, by extension, I had efforts to be acknowledged and I was really touched that they were. Maybe it was just because my playing partner had some difficulty with the controls, but I totally had saved Jake, more than once. Several of these fics are based on those moments. _

_Mostly, I was struck by how Jake and Sherry go through the campaign as...well, equals. Jake is remarkably not sexist or demeaning towards her for being a girl. He, and through him the game, acknowledges everything that Sherry contributes to the adventure, and how Jake wouldn't have survived without her. So I wanted to flip the tables a bit, having Jake be the Distressed Dude with Sherry riding in to the rescue. _

_I did my best to keep them IC throughout, of course, but you'll have to be the judge of how I did_


	2. by staying on her toes

Jake Muller was not a subtle being by nature. He'd never been one for stealth missions. And while he was hardly inexperienced when it came to B.O.W.s, Ustanak had so far proven tough enough to actually force Jake to run rather than beat its mutated face in.

And it turned out that it wasn't just obscenely durable, either. He had built in bloodhounds to boot.

Jake was a good shot, even if he preferred to use his fists whenever possible. So it had been the easiest thing in the world to take aim and shoot one of those creepy flapping bats out of the air.

Later on, he'd kick himself for that, but it had made sense at the time. His pistol was modded and silenced, and there had been no sign of Ustanak in front of or behind them. Sherry had even looked relieved as the thing dropped to the ground with a wet little "plop", its sickly green blood oozing out over the ice.

But then the look of relief in Sherry's expression faded into one of terror, the blood draining from her face, and Jake knew why, because he heard the thunder of lumbering but powerful footfalls off in the distance, echoing off the walls, but unmistakably approaching them.

"Shit," said Jake, stepping back. "He found us!" With how narrow the passageway was, he felt confident that Ustanak was coming at them from up ahead. All that meant was that there was only one way to run, making it easy for it to chase them down.

They ran anyway, even though the sounds of their retreat on the ice beneath their feet probably did as much to alert Ustanak as the gunshot had done. They probably would have run right past the bin they'd passed earlier if Sherry hadn't bounced off of it in her haste, stumbling and staring at it as though it were a ferocious B.O.W. Jake ran on for a few feet more just from sheer momentum before he spun round to face her. "Sherry, come _on!_" he yelled – there was no point in being quiet now.

Or so he thought. Sherry seemed to think otherwise. She looked up at him, eyes wide and frightened, and then pressed a finger to her lips. "Quick!" she hissed, her voice tight with fear. "Hide!" Then she eased up the lid of the bin and slipped inside.

Jake looked left, then right. Ustanak was only coming nearer. However it was sensing them, it had their scent. He had no idea if hiding would do any good.

Running sure as hell wouldn't do any good, however, so he ducked in after Sherry, managing not to slam the lid down after him. Immediately, he thought they were doomed. The damn lid didn't even close all the way – there was a gap of inches left between the rim of the bin and the lid.

But he ducked down with Sherry as much as he could and held his breath. Seconds ticked by as Ustanak ran nearer, and nearer, and nearer, and then _stopped_, and Jake could just see a sliver of the hulking monster, looking around, sniffing them out. The sound of its drill was a whine that set his teeth on edge.

Part of Jake just wanted to leap out and attack. He didn't want to wait for Ustanak to sniff them out here and rip this bin apart like it was the tin and they were the sardines. It would surely happen any second, how could it _not_ be able to sense them cowering two feet away, or look down and see them…

Miraculously, it didn't. It didn't see them, it didn't smell them, and with Jake and Sherry doing their damndest not to show any signs of life, it sure as hell didn't hear them. After a few tense seconds, it lumbered away, and kept going.

Only when the sound of it had receded to a distant rumble did Jake and Sherry exhale identical sighs of relief.

"When's it our turn to chase him?" Jake grumbled, opening the door and getting out of the bin. Sherry smiled weakly as she followed him.

"So I think it's safe to say those bugs aren't the only way he can hear," she said. "Or else they've spread so far through this cave that one of them heard the other one die."

"Sure," said Jake. He didn't really care how Ustanak was finding them, only that those bugs were at least partially responsible. In fact, he cared more about the fact that he'd nearly brought violent, bloody death down on their heads.

Sherry was talking like she had a plan, at least, and she seemed to be on a roll in that regard. "Shooting them is going to make too much noise. I couldn't even see him before, but he almost had us."

"I noticed." At least she had the decency not to say "I told you so", or some smug shit like that. Maybe she just didn't see the need to kick him for being stupid when Jake was doing that himself. Why waste the effort when they still had so many other problems to face?

"Maybe we can sneak up on them."

"I thought you would have noticed, being a good little government type. Guns tend to make a pretty loud bang, no matter how good you are at sneaking up on someone. Guns are there so you don't _have_ to sneak up on something."

"I know that." She frowned up at him, which meant she ran right into his arm as he flung it out to stop her. Looking up, she saw why. There was a wavering blue light visible at the corner, and as they watched, it drew nearer, accompanied by the flapping of wings.

Jake stepped back. Maybe, if they got near enough to the bin, they could duck inside it more quickly after he shot it. Sherry, however, stayed squared her shoulders and set her jaw, determined despite her fear.

"I mean like this," she whispered.

She moved back with him enough to keep out of its light, and even five feet away, that proved to be enough. Finally, it seemed to overextend its reach, and turned around to flap away back the way it had come.

That was when Sherry _struck_. She stepped forward, once, twice, until she was close enough to strike like a snake with a chop to the thing's body. The force drove it against the ice with a damp little "splat", killing it instantly.

They stayed frozen for a few seconds, staring at it warily just to make sure. The bug didn't so much as twitch, however, and then they let themselves breathe again. Sherry looked back at Jake, smiling in relief, and he felt himself smiling as well.

"Nice shot, super girl," he said, and meant it.

She seemed to have a sense for when to move in against these things, so Jake let her take point as they crept along. He kept close behind and beside her, watching their backs and ready to shove her behind him if things went sour from the front. She seemed to have things handled, and there was no point getting in her way. Swatting bugs was a one person job, even mutant glowing bugs.

So it went. They left a path of dead mutant bugs behind them like a demented trail of breadcrumbs. It was almost methodical work, at least up until they reached the door and found it swarming.

Jake and Sherry, without a word exchanged between them, hid in the bin situated in the corner while they tried to decide how to proceed.

"I guess he know we'd come this way eventually," Sherry whispered, peering out through the gap.

"There's the door," said Jake, nodding to where it was just visible from their hiding place. "We could make a break for it. Feeling lucky?"

"Honestly? Not a bit."

"Yeah, me neither." But even from here, he could see the blue lights in the lowered paths, wavering with the flaps of the bug's wings. It looked like one continuous mass down there, even if he couldn't see individual bugs over the railing. Jake couldn't see any way that they were getting across without getting spotted by at least one, and having it turn into a mad dash anyway.

Better to die than be killed.

Even as he thought that thought, Sherry seemed to agree with him. Or, at the least, she lifted the lid and clambered back out of the bin. Jake eased out after her, watching her back as she crept to the short flight of stairs leading down.

"Sherry?" he asked, keeping his voice as low as he could.

"Watch out for the big guy," she hissed back. "I don't want him sneaking up on us. But…I'm going in."

Disbelieving, Jake moved to the edge beside her and looked down. There were about as many bugs as he'd guessed there to be, maybe more, all flapping industriously and scoping out the area. He saw that there were, briefly, little patches of shadow where their circles of searchlights didn't meet. He wasn't sure he believed that those little patches of shadow would be enough even for someone as tiny as Sherry.

She seemed to think otherwise. Without another word, she started slowly and carefully down the steps. Jake could have reached out and stopped her, but it probably would have made her stumble, lose her rhythm, and definitely get her spotted. So he didn't. Instead, he moved to the mouth of the passageway to wait, and keep watch.

Despite himself, he couldn't help glancing worriedly back at her every few seconds. Each and every time, she was still standing, and out of the light, and moving like she knew what she was doing. Every so often, he heard the by now comforting squishy sound of a bug being splatted.

It was like a dance, and then Jake discarded that thought almost as soon as he had it. It was like she was a coyote, and they were the dumbass hens. She knew when to step back, but only to wait for a moment where she could keep up the attack.

"Stay on your toes, super girl," he said, as she retreated briefly to the stairs. And she did.

Ustanak caught them soon after they passed through the door, however, but at least they had a head start.

* * *

_I actually had Jake on A.I. for this chapter, and I found it interesting that as a result, he usually stayed behind me or waited by the bin. This section was my attempted explanation for what he would have been thinking during this stage, if that were the case. I think one of my favorite moments in the game was Jake saying, "Stay on your toes, super girl" as I was taking out Oko. And not one of those little bastards ever spotted me, either._


	3. by going crazy

Most wouldn't know it to look at Jake, but he was actually quite light on his feet.

Most people wouldn't know it to look at Ustanak, but it was pretty fast as well.

It was nice to have backup this time around. They seemed to know what they were doing, at least, and to stay out of his way. Ustanak was obviously out for blood, and had picked up a few new tricks in the last six months to keep things interesting. The one small mercy in this entire mess was that it wasn't good at dividing its attention between four targets all raining bullets down its ugly face.

Jake had moved in close. It was a risk, but he'd never been afraid of risks, and the magnum had crap accuracy at any kind of range or height. "Come on, asshole!" he laughed, unloading the next clip into Ustanak's chest. The thing roared in rage, caught between him and Helena's assault rifle. "What's the matter? Am I too hot for you to handle now?!"

The beast fired his claw at Jake, and then with impressive speed, whirled around and fired a grenade at Helena. The claw fell short, especially when Jake sprang to the right and back when he saw it coming. The grenade did not. The explosion flung her back against a shipping crate, knocking her senseless for a few seconds. "Helena!" Leon yelled, swinging himself down from the shipping crate to go and help. Jake, in turn, moved in again, close enough to start firing at Ustanak's arm as it started to withdraw its claw back into place. Unfortunately, this new model proved a bit more difficult to rip out of its socket than the other one had been.

The makeshift grappling gun clicked home. And then Ustanak fired at Jake immediately again. Grinning, Jake dodged again…only for Ustanak to swing its arm towards him, tracking his movements, and for the thing to fly even further than it had last time.

Jake only realized that he'd been tricked, that the bastard had feigned him out on the first shot, made him think its range was less than it really was, when the hand _slammed_ into him, driving him back several steps more before the claws closed around him. "Jake!" Sherry screamed, and he heard footsteps running, but it was too late – Ustanak was dragging him back like a fish on the hook. Jake tried to save himself, kicking to try and hook his leg around something, scrabbling at the ground, but it was no good – there was nothing to grab in this ruined scrapyard that would slow him down, and Ustanak was still as strong as ever.

He looked up to see Sherry racing to help him, but it was too late. Ustanak snapped its arm back into place with enough speed and force to nearly give Jake whiplash, and he found himself caught, held off the ground by the monster's mechanical grasp.

"Put him down!" Sherry yelled, hoisting the shotgun. Leon and a newly recovered Helena also closed in once more. Jake realized they were hesitant to unload on Ustanak now, however, in case they hit him.

"Come on!" Jake yelled. He kicked his legs and tried to pry the bars of Ustanak's claw out from around him. Ustanak responded by tightening his hold until Jake felt the pressure against his ribs. "Shoot the bastard already!"

Leon and Helena recovered quickly. Sherry was a little slower to gather her courage. However, for all her unwillingness to risk Jake's life, Sherry soon proved fearsome in her attempts to free him. Armed with a shotgun and guts, she kept close, ducking and dodging bullets and grenades to keep harrying Ustanak up close while Helena and Leon pressed the attack from a range. Sherry kept going for her stun rod, probably hoping that the electrical charge would force Ustanak to lose its grip. Ustanak seemed to realize this, however, and utilizing a combination of its bizarre agility and its artillery of grenades, kept her from getting close enough. Sherry kept trying with a grim look of determination in her eyes, and she even started yelling at it, taunting it, to try and keep its attention on her.

One man down, they resumed the attack, trying to press Ustanak back, and maybe make it more trouble than it was worth for him to keep holding on to Jake. Unfortunately, they managed it. Rather than release his prisoner, however, Ustanak had come to the party with a way to hold him tighter.

A clanking of rusty metal was Jake's only warning before he found himself tossed over Ustanak's shoulder, sliding down into the cage on its back that was so small his legs dangled out the bottom of the bars. The lid slammed shut over his head with the click of an automatic lock.

Jake hadn't really paid attention to the cage, when the battle first began, not expecting to get caught in it at all. So he definitely hadn't noticed the needles and blades attached to the cage on Ustanak's back, until they stabbed out and speared him. They stabbed through his sides, the thin blades sliding between his ribs and stopping just shy of piercing his lungs or heart. Not only did it hurt like a bitch, it stopped him struggling to let loose.

"Jake!" Sherry yelled as he cried out in pain. He couldn't see her, but she still sounded close. "Jake, are you okay?"

"Sure!" he snapped, gritting his teeth against the pain. "I always wanted to get a piggy back ride from a giant mutant freak!"

"Hang on! Leon, Helena, cover me!"

He didn't know why they were suddenly all gung-ho _now_, since freeing him had just gotten even more difficult. Jake, however, had no intention of just sitting and waiting for rescue. The blades he'd just been stabbed with were meant to stop him wriggling free, so Jake set to work trying just that.

Pulling against one blade meant pushing against another, trying to pull forward made them tear at him, and blood spattered the ground as Ustanak moved around the scrap yard making a spirited effort to gun down the other three. He caught Helena in his claws shortly after Jake, but Leon came in with a sliding tackle to Ustanak's legs that made him stumble and gave Helena enough room to wriggle free and run to a safe distance.

It was painful work, but Jake kept trying, tugging at the blades so that they sliced through his gloves and cut at his hands. The cage was so small that there just wasn't enough room for him to get battered and shaken around too much, and for that, he was perversely grateful. If there had been, he probably would have been jolted right into a blade through the heart, and he was bleeding enough as it was. Getting near to Ustanak was dangerous enough. Getting close enough to both get behind him and grab ahold of the cage was something even Jake would admit would be borderline suicidal.

So it was a very great surprise when Sherry took a flying leap from the top of a shipping crate and landing on Ustanak's shoulders with a wild yell of abandon. The impact of her added weight jolted Jake badly, but the next second she'd broken the lock and flipped the lid of the cage open, so he couldn't complain.

"Sherry, you have officially gone nuts!" Jake called up to her. "It's a good look on you!"

"You're a bad influence!" she yelled back, her words punctuated by the familiar "zap" of a stun rod delivering a few good charges. "Besides, you're right! Getting a piggyback isn't so bad!"

Jake's laugh effectively masked how painful it was to finally pull one of the blades free. The next second, Ustanak decided to try and solve both its problems by slamming itself back against one of the crates. Jake had the bars between him and the impact, and they didn't so much as bend. Sherry wasn't so lucky – she cried out in pain, and the impact seemed to daze her badly, but she managed to hold on and he hadn't heard anything crack. That didn't stop Ustanak from trying again to smear her into paste, especially when the first thing she did upon recovering her wits was continue to beat him in the head with the stun rod.

Jake just did what he could to make use of the opening he'd been given to free himself. The stalemate lasted until Leon called down from above. "Hang on, Sherry!"

Helena fired, and the gas cans scattered around their feet exploded in a hail of shrapnel and heat.

When awareness returned, Jake realized he was on his side, because the cage was on its side. Ustanak had actually been knocked over by the force of the blast, and either stunned or knocked the hell out.

His chest hurt like a bitch, and the bars around him and the ground beneath him were shining with blood. His clothes were tattered from trying to use them as a barrier between his hands and the blades. Jake went right back to work trying to pry the second one out from between his ribs.

Sherry appeared at his side, limping and battered and bleeding. She reached inside between the bars of his cage to help him.

"Don't be gentle with me, super girl," Jake said, as Ustanak gave a twitch and a rumble. "I'm a tough guy, remember." It clearly pained her to do so, but she listened. The most important thing was getting him out and getting him loose, and that could only be accomplished by ripping inches of metal out of him an inch at a time so that blood made hands and blades slick. Jake felt himself getting weaker from blood loss by the second. Sherry had to take his hands to steady them.

It felt as though it took forever, but in reality, with the two of them working frantically, Ustanak was only just lumbering back to its feet when Sherry and Jake slid the last blade free from his flesh. Growling, Ustanak looked back at both of them with its one good eye narrowed. It moved to slam the lid shut on Jake again, but Sherry held him back by jamming her stun rod between lid and cage. "Jake, come on!"

Moving with the last of his adrenaline, Jake grabbed hold of the rim of the cage. Sherry got beneath his dangling legs to heave him up, and with her help, he tumbled free of the cage to painfully hit the dirt.

"Hey, asshole!" Sherry yelled, just as Ustanak loomed over him. Ustanak reflexively looked back at the girl, and took a magnum round to the forehead.

The force of the point blank shot, coupled with the damage done by the explosion, was enough. It was enough to finally drive the beast back. Ustanak roared, staggering back, and then miraculously, blessedly, it turned away. It scrambled up the side of a shipping crate and disappeared down the other side, the pounding sound of its footsteps receding into silence.

Sherry knelt down next to him, and Jake felt a pill being shoved into his mouth. He swallowed it, recognizing the bitter tang of one of her special clotting agents. Sherry then went to work wrapping her scarf around his middle. It was a poor substitute for a bandage, but it was something. Jake let her, even if all he wanted to do was move. It wouldn't do to leave even more of a trail for someone to follow. They could do a better job of it when they were out immediate danger – he felt confident he could last that long.

"Oh my god, there's so much blood." Sherry shuddered.

"This is nothing," Jake said, getting to his feet a little unsteadily. A passing thought made him chuckle. "Heh. Normally I'd charge you for a free sample like this, but after that little show you put on back there, I think I can be generous."

"You'd better be." She smiled weakly up at him. "…I'm glad you're okay, Jake."

"We're not out of the woods yet." He nodded to where Leon and Helena were waiting up ahead, at a door that would hopefully lead out of this deathtrap. "I'm glad I'm okay, too. Now, come on. You can play doctor later, away from the smoking wreckage."

Sherry didn't offer him a hand, which showed how well they'd come to know each other over the last few weeks. He didn't say thanks, even though he was grateful for the rescue, and conscious of the danger she'd put herself in to mount it.

Jake didn't like it when Sherry was in danger, especially when she had to put herself in danger for his sake. The fact that she seemed to be getting some practice at it was a phenomenon he wasn't sure how he felt about.

But maybe Sherry wasn't a super girl just because of her blood. If there was anyone he'd trust to come to the rescue, Jake was coming to realize it was her.

* * *

_This bit probably deviates the most from gameplay elements. Mostly because I couldn't find a video of what it looks like when you actually get caught in Ustanak's cage, and I didn't particularly want to skim every single Ustanak battle video second by second trying to find the scene. So this is my extrapolation of just how getting stuck in a cage might drain your health, based on some of Ustanak's other attacks._


	4. by making a leap of faith

The Rasklapanje had been giving them trouble.

"Why won't you stay dead?!"

With a roar of frustration, Jake ripped the thing's slimy torso away from its legs and heaved it into the corner. Sherry immediately started unloading on it with the shotgun as it tried to right itself and crawl back towards them. After a few rounds, it started twitching even more than seemed to be its natural state, and its sickly green skin bleached to white. Finally, finally, it stopped moving.

Temporarily.

Leaving its legs and at least one hand to deal with. Almost on cue, the hand leapt up into his face like the monster at the end of the horror movie. Jake snatched it away, tossed it on the ground, and tried to stomp on it, but the damn thing just scuttled away. Instead, he took out his growing frustrations on the legs, before they could start spewing gas. After a few seconds they, too, had gone pale and still.

Just in time for the cry of another one of the damn things to come echoing down the hallway.

"I think we're done here," Sherry panted, hurrying by him to the door.

"'He who fights and runs away'…" Jake sighed. He hated running away from a fight, even when it started looking rapidly like a fight he couldn't win. But practicality won over pride, and he followed.

Of course, just because they wanted to leave didn't mean they could. There was a tense moment of having to wait for the "elevator" to swing back around for them, while all the while the second Rasklapanje stalked closer and closer, probably with a third not far on its heels and the first one regenerating by the second.

One of the squirmy bastards had just rounded the corner, its eyeless face turned towards them, its limbs flopping and flailing like a broken doll, when Jake heard the elevator come to a stop. He turned, saw their opening, and jumped. "Sherry, come on!"

Sherry leaped after him. Jake landed, turned, and saw with a lurching feeling in his stomach that the hand he'd left unaccounted for had leapt after her. "Look out!" he cried, but almost before the words had left its mouth, it had landed on the platform with them and taken hold of her ankle. There was a horrible moment where he saw her start to fall, but then Jake reached out, caught her wrist, and pulled her along to the broader pathways in the center of the elevator. The two of them managed to outmuscle the disembodied hand, and then it was a simple matter of ripping it off and tossing it in the roiling magma below.

"I hope that hurt," Jake grumbled.

"Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they followed us up here," said Sherry, trying not to sound shaken by her most recent near death experience. "Even they probably couldn't put themselves back together after that, right?"

"You'd think so," said Jake. "But I don't think anything would surprise me anymore."

"I guess now we have to find which door we opened up."

Trying to ignore the oppressive heat boiling up from below, and most importantly trying not to look down at it, Sherry and Jake settled down to scan the towering walls around them for a door that hadn't been open five minutes ago.

It wasn't long before they found it, when the elevator spun past. Unfortunately, they both noticed a very big problem with their new route.

"Is it just me, or…does that door look even further away than the last few?" Sherry asked nervously.

"It's not just you," said Jake, craning his head to keep studying the door as they passed by. He saw a maintenance pipe suspended over the gap that he knew he could probably use to vault across, but it would be a risk. And one false step here would mean instant, painful, fiery death. If the Rasklapanje couldn't survive a drop into roiling magma, Jake had no confidence in their skills to do the same. He was good, but he wasn't that good, and Sherry still seemed to need a body to regenerate.

Sherry must have been thinking the same thing, but she still tried to smile bravely. "Well, nothing ventured, right? If you go first and wait to catch me, I can probably make it."

"No way, Sherry," said Jake immediately. "I'll go it alone. Maybe the next switch will open up a door that's slightly less of a death trap."

"Jake, you can't! What if there are more of those things up there?!"

"I'll shoot 'em until they stop moving and then run like hell. It's worked for us so far, right?"

"That was when we were together!"

"I'm not leaving you forever." He couldn't help but feel a bit bemused at her emphatic reaction. "I'll be gone ten minutes, tops. Just sit and spin here for a bit."

He didn't like it, and Sherry obviously wasn't convinced, and Jake couldn't blame her. He sighed, and tried another tactic. "Look. It's not like I've suddenly decided you're dead weight, Sherry. You're not, and no matter how much I get knocked around by mutant monsters, I'm not going to forget that. That's why I don't want you making that leap – you're too good to go down thanks to a bad jump or a slow catch if you don't have to. I…I don't want to risk it. I don't want to risk you like that."

"Jake…"

He didn't like the tone in her voice but, to be fair, he didn't like the tone his voice seemed to have taken on against his will, either. One quick glance at Sherry's face, however, assured Jake that he'd said the right thing, however strange it had been to finally come out and say it. She wouldn't try to follow him, if only not to worry him. Sherry was stupidly selfless like that.

"See you in ten," he said, turning away just as the platform swung into place again. Jake took his run up, and leapt over the gap, hands outstretched to catch the bar. He grabbed it the second it was in reach, and then used the solid grip for extra momentum to swing himself the rest of the way across the gap, landing neatly in the open doorway.

He couldn't help but look back, then, now that he was safe, just to make sure. To his very great relief, he saw Sherry still there, moved well back from the edge, sitting and waiting as she spun away. Jake let out the breath he'd been holding. Then he turned away to face the new area and start the hunt for the switches.

While dodging Rasklapanje in the bargain.

One fell out of the air duct behind him as he was searching, and another appeared from the ooze in what seemed to be a makeshift clinic. Jake managed to put them both temporarily down just in time to run into a third one. He wondered if their captors had specifically loosed them like guard dogs, and hoped that if this was the case they'd all been eaten.

Jake kept his magnum at the ready, and tried to keep moving. Unfortunately, he soon realized that just because they couldn't be killed, that didn't mean Sherry hadn't done some good. She'd made an admirable alternate target, meaning that between them they only had to deal with one and a half regenerating zombies on top of their crawling hands.

And just as Jake thought that thought, he realized he hadn't been keeping an eye out for the hands because he'd been too busy ducking bodies to take out the body parts. It leapt up into his face, sending him staggering back and clawing at it while it clawed at its eyes. "Get the fuck off of me, already!"

Just as he threw one away, another leapt in to take its place. Three slimy, floppy zombies, six jumping, grasping hands. Another jumped up to go for his throat, but Jake managed to take a second out to elbow it so that it struck the wall with a satisfying "thud".

All the while, however, as he was fighting and flailing and trying not to be strangled by a dead hand that nevertheless had a grip like steel, one of the owners of those hands were creeping closer and closer, their high, shrill cries echoing in the corridor.

Jake managed to get himself free, ducked hand number three, and then ran. He soon realized that he'd gotten badly turned around in the midst of all his struggling, however. He'd tried to make the search for the switches systematic, albeit quick, but stumbled to a stop in a machinery-filled room a couple of minutes later without the slightest idea of how he'd gotten there.

"Easy, Jake," he told himself softly. "No reason to panic. You've got plenty of bullets, and they're way behind you by now. Just keep going, and…"

And then a series of approaching thumps in the air ducts were his only warning before the Rasklapanje he'd thought he'd put down five rooms ago exploded out of the vent, leaping for him. Jake had backed up as soon as he'd heard something coming, and it was lucky he had, because it landed on the floor instead of on him. Jake was raising his gun to unload on it when one of those fucking slippery slimy hands grabbed the back of his head and _yanked_, costing him his balance and nearly sending him to the floor right with his newest attacker.

Jake recovered, reaching around to grab it and maybe crush it with the force of his frustration. Then his nose alerted him to the presence of toxic gas a second before he inhaled it. He hadn't noticed that the thing had come out of the vent missing its legs until too late.

He realized then that he was dead. It was just a matter of the screaming, now. He still tried to fight against the poison and the thing's unnatural grip as it grabbed him around the waist and bore him to the ground, but it seemed inevitable now.

Soldiers of fortunes like him didn't get to choose how they died. If they had, Jake would have preferred to go out on a blade compared to this.

_Sorry, super girl. I didn't mean to leave you like this._

It pinned his arms out to either side of him, and soon turned out not to need its arms to kill him. As Jake tugged fruitlessly, the mutant reared back its head, and from its lipless maw emerged an enormous, squelching, fleshy…_leech_. With a mouth just the right size to close over his head.

Even now, Jake refused to close his eyes, or show fear to this thing. He just hoped he died too quickly to feel it eating him.

He didn't get his wish, if only because the impact of Sherry's shotgun bullets jerked its head and entire torso to the side, sending it toppling off of him.

Jake recovered well for having come within milliseconds of being devoured. He rolled over and grabbed the magnum from where it had skittered away across the floor. He finished off the legs, while Sherry didn't stop until the torso had stopped twitching. A round each into both hands stopped them cold as well.

Then, the keening cries of the other two Rasklapanje echoing in the metal hallways, they nevertheless allowed themselves a moment to recover. It would take a bit for their foes to zero in on them.

"Jake!" Sherry yelled, dashing over to him and kneeling down next to him. "Are you hurt?"

"Not for lack of trying." Jake flashed back to that moment, the moment where he'd seen down its maw and thought it would be the last thing he ever saw. Despite himself, he shuddered viscerally. One more nightmare to add to the pile. When Sherry offered him a hand up, just this once, he took it. "I did gulp down some of that gas, though. Got any pills left?"

She did, popping an immune booster into her hand and passing it to him. Jake swallowed it gratefully. He was tougher than most, thanks at least in some small part to his father's blood, but fighting the C virus was the entire reason he was here in the first place and they'd decided not to take chances with poison gas. "Thanks. I guess I lost track of my stash."

"I can't really blame you. We've been running for our lives, after all."

Without speaking, they started walking. Jake let Sherry lead the way – she'd found her way to him, so maybe she was a little less turned around than he was. "You make it sound like we're doing drugs," Sherry added, with a tiny laugh. She was probably still a little drunk on adrenaline from her narrow aversion of a near-death experience, so Jake generously decided to forgive her a few bad jokes.

There were more important matters to discuss, anyway.

"Hey, how'd you find me, anyway? Last I saw you, we'd covered all the ground you and your short legs could reach, and none of it led here."

"You're right," Sherry said, sounding pleased with herself. "But I noticed the elevator above us, and eventually I noticed that it stopped at some of the doors I could reach. I hopped off, and then I hopped back on above, and I managed to reach another room on the same floor."

"Then it was just a matter of following the screaming, huh?"

"I figured they had to be chasing something." She looked back at him, frowning. "Hey. You weren't screaming."

"Well, that makes me feel a _lot_ better." He couldn't help but roll his eyes, annoyed at himself for being so shaken as he obviously was, and a little annoyed at her for noticing that.

"Jake, you were outnumbered. That doesn't make you weak. Especially not against _that!_"

"I know, I know. I just…could have gone my whole life without seeing down that thing's throat."

Sherry glanced nervously up at him, and then tried to smile. "…I'm glad you're okay, Jake. When I saw you, it was the scariest thing I'd ever seen. I almost froze."

"But you didn't." He smiled wearily back at her. "Nice shot."

"Thanks. I just…realized that I really don't want you to die."

"Yeah. I mean, the world would go right down the tubes without me. Or with me, if those bastards at Neo-Umbrella had their way."

"That's not what I mean and you know it!"

"What do you mean, then?" he asked, his voice sharper than he meant.

They came to a room bisected by, of all things, an electric fence. Jake and Sherry stood, side by side, looking around the room, grateful for the excuse to not say anything or look at each other for a few minutes. On one side of the fence, one switch. On the other side, another. There was a gap in the fence just big enough to let one of them through.

Sherry started off towards it, perhaps without thinking, perhaps as a minor form of payback for him leaving her to sit and spin. She paused in the gateway, however, looking back at him.

"I mean you're a good person, Jake. You're not weak. The people we're fighting against are just really strong. And I can't beat them by myself. And…and I really don't want you to die, and it's not just because of your blood. It's because of _you_."

And that, for Sherry at least, seemed to be that.

Jake knew he should reply with something equally pithy and sincere. Maybe it was because he was still a little shaken up by his brush with death but, this time, he tried.

"Thanks, Sherry. You…you're not so bad yourself."

The Rasklapanje were an almost welcome distraction, after that.

* * *

_Fuck Rasklapanje. Just...fuck...them. Fuck those creepy, floppy, indestructable things and their annoying cry and their ridiculously long kill animation._ _It's definitely one of the more horrifying ways to die, though. So, between the difficulty we had with them, the hate we held for them, and that death animation, this fic was born. I'd say Sherry and Jake's section was where we had the most trouble with them, anyway._


	5. by making an opening

_And there was really no point in the campaign to end it on but thsi one. Like most players, I wasn't exactly happy to have Sherry basically taken out of the fight. The only bigger "fuck you" given by the game to whoever was playing the female character was Helena having almost everything disabled while carrying Deborah. But I still managed to get in a few good whacks with the shipping crate._

* * *

When Sherry looked out over the landscape, she saw ruined, twisted metal sinking slowly into magma, she saw the air shimmering and writhing with heat, she saw an unstoppable monster facing off against Jake, the only thing between him and escape.

She saw that they'd fallen into hell.

She had to keep climbing, as sweat poured down her face and the heat threatened to smother her, because the metal rungs of the ladder were almost too hot to hold, even this far above the fire. She climbed, and stumbled onto the walkway above, and looked back to see that Jake was actually attacking Ustanak with his bare hands.

Sherry started to call out to him in alarm, but stopped herself at the last second. He might actually hear her, and she might distract him if he did, and one moment of distraction would be the end for him now. She had to trust him to come out alive one last time, even as he battled with his bare hands the monster that had dogged their steps for months now.

She couldn't do anything to help him, now. She'd managed to hold on to her stun rod when Ustanak had kicked her gun into the magma, but high up here, with no way to go to him and help, she might as well have been empty handed. Yards away, she might as well have been miles.

Sherry wanted to help him, somehow, and the frustration of being helpless and far away now, after everything they'd gone through together, made her want to scream. She held herself back so as not to distract Jake. It quickly proved a good thing she had – Jake was putting up a valiant effort, and Ustanak was actually giving ground. There were several near misses, however, even as she watched, and Jake had to be lucky with his dodging every time as the heat sapped the energy from his muscles. Ustanak only had to get in a lucky shot once to knock Jake into the magma.

She could hear him taunting the beast, however, even now, even this far away. The fire in his voice was almost as hot as the fire boiling around him. It made Sherry smile, and gave her the courage to turn away and focus on finding a way out of here. If…_when_ Jake finally won, it wouldn't make much of a difference if they burned with Ustanak.

She didn't find a way out. Instead, Sherry found something else that simultaneously distracted her and gave her hope. There was a control panel up ahead, set into gap where one walkway met another higher up. It had miraculously survived all the damage and collapse. Sherry dashed over to it, and set to work examining it for some hint of its function.

Ignoring the sound of Jake's grunt of pain as one of Ustanak's blows connected was one of the hardest things she had ever done. But she heard him keep fighting anyway, and so Sherry kept working. In less than a minute that nevertheless felt like an eternity, she'd brought the shipping crate cranes back online.

Only then did Sherry allow herself to look back at the scene she'd left in the middle of the boiling lake of red. She saw immediately that the fight couldn't last much longer. Jake was tiring, but Ustanak did not tire. He couldn't last forever, but he couldn't break through Ustanak's defenses.

He needed an opening.

Sherry realized she could give him one, if only Jake could drive the monster back a little bit more. She warred with herself for several crucial seconds before giving in, and calling out. "Jake! I'll cover you!"

He looked up at her after coming back up from a duck. He saw her, saw where she was standing and the machinery around her, and even this far away, she saw him come to the right conclusion. And then she saw him pull out everything he had just to drive Ustanak back a little bit more. Every punch he threw, every step he took forward, made her hurt in sympathy for how much it was obviously costing him. All she could do was wait, however, with her hand hovering over the button, and pray.

"Sherry!" Jake yelled, driving his palm into Ustanak's gut. The monster who had chased them from the very beginning stepped back.

Sherry slammed her hand down on the button, and the shipping crate went rocketing down the rails towards the pair on the platform. Jake had known it was coming, and ducked. Ustanak hadn't, and took a few hundred pounds of metal to the head.

It stumbled, giving Jake an opening. Jake _seized_ it.

"That's it, Jake!" Sherry cried in elation. "You got it!"

He drove into Ustanak, fists and feet flying, calling upon the last of his reserves, driven by the hope that it was finally about to be over. Sherry cheered him on without reservation from the balcony. Seeing him now, seeing Ustanak falter with its crushing blows going wilder and wilder, she couldn't help but hope. "Get him! You can do it, Jake!"

"Fuck off!" Jake snarled into Ustanak's face just before his fist met the monster's jaw. "Take that!" He delivered a crushing jab to its side, smoothly twisting around to catch its arm for its next blow. "You like that?"

Jake _pulled_, bringing Ustanak's face down to its level. He punched, his fist meeting the creature's one remaining eye. Then he punched, and punched, and kept punching, roaring in fury, all the pain and fear and frustration and hate he held for Ustanak pouring out of him, fueling him, until one crushing blow sent the great, unstoppable monster stumbling to the very edge.

"_Die already!_"

And Jake's final blow sent it toppling. They both allowed themselves a second to watch it burn before settling down to getting out.

That wasn't the end of it, but it was the beginning of the end. It was all over but the shot to the heart.


	6. by returning the favor

The world was saved, and life went on. People moved on, sometimes just because they had no choice in the matter.

Sherry was one such person. Saving the world had resulted in her being left adrift, in the end. She'd muddled on as best she could, trying to construct a semblance of a life on her own for the first time in her life.

She wanted to be out there, cleaning up the world, fighting the good fight against the lingering threat of bioterrorism, administering the C virus vaccine to places that needed it most.

With Simmons revealed to have been a part of the entire disaster, however, his entire staff had been investigated. And she, Sherry, who had been Simmons' ward for nearly half her life, had been deemed irreparably compromised and given a polite, but firm farewell.

She thought she did a decent enough job for herself after that. Even if being a night watchman for a museum wasn't where she wanted to be, it was better than waiting tables, she was good at it, and it was something at least passingly worthwhile. Even the late nights, with her shift ending sometime around sunrise, didn't bother her much. She had her own car, and she'd covertly kept her stun rod.

But it wasn't where she wanted to be, and when she found Jake lingering out in the parking lot outside the museum, her first thought was for the months they'd spent together. The sight of him made her smile until her cheeks hurt. The fact that he smiled back and waved her over made her feel more alive than she had in months.

"Jake!" she cried, hurrying over. "How are you?"

After everything they'd been through, and how long it had been, she didn't hesitate to throw her arms around him. It let her be absolutely certain that he was really here, and that she hadn't started hallucinating out of desperation.

She briefly thought she must be when he hugged her back. But, it had been a long time, the world was still a dangerous place, and they were both fairly danger prone people at the best of times. Maybe he was just glad to see her. Under those circumstances. It would certainly have been easy enough for them to never meet again.

Sherry let herself enjoy the moment before she pulled away. She looked up at him, searching his face for any sign of…well, anything. How he was, or what he was doing here.

"How are you? What are you doing here?"

He looked well enough – no new scars, and she could feel through his shirt that he'd at least been eating enough. And she saw in his eyes that he looked…at ease. Content, maybe. Happy where he was.

She asked him out loud just to see if he'd tell her that himself, and in an effort to focus on him so she didn't focus on herself, and give in to the all too easy jealousy.

"Right now, I'm just happy to have finally found the right museum." said Jake. "D.C. has way too many."

"Why were you looking for museums?"

"I wasn't looking for museums. I was looking for you. Is your shift over?"

"Yeah, it just ended. Why?"

"Because I knew a straight shooter like you wouldn't even skip out on a night shift. Since you don't have to, come on. I'll buy you dinner and fill you in."

"Fill me in? On what?" She knew that she was going to follow him anyway. Just the chance to catch up was too good to pass up. Curiosity, however, made her ask anyway. "Has something happened?"

"Long story and I'm hungry," said Jake, maddeningly vague and completely aware of it. "I'll bring you back for your car later. Do you want to come with or not?"

"Of course I do! Just let me get some things out of my car."

Jake waited until she'd turned away and walked a few steps before he added, "Oh, and since you're stalling…you might want to run back in and tell whoever's taking your place that the thief who's been hanging around is making his move around by the west entrance."

"What? Damn it!"

He tried to hide his laughter as she dashed back to the museum to sound the alarm, but at least he'd told her. Absolutely nothing, it seemed, could knock the wiseass out of Jake Muller.

Sherry knew she wouldn't have him any other way.

One hour later saw the thief in question arrested, and Sherry was more than happy to duck out with Jake to delay having to wrestle with the paperwork. She rode away with Jake, leaving her car there just so she would have to come back and handle it before her next shift.

In the meantime, Jake drove them both to a restaurant-slash-diner a good ways downtown, the sun rising behind them. It was enough of a drive that the place was just starting to open when they arrived.

"And thank god for that," he said, pushing open the door to the sound of a bell above the door. "I may not have been in the country long, but I think the food says enough about the place."

"What's wrong with American food?"

"As an acceptable form of torture? Not a damn thing."

It turned out that the place specialized in Slavic food, instead. It made sense, she supposed, since Jake had grown up on it. She got the impression that he was trying to sell her on his favorite style of food as much as whatever plan he'd come up with, and Sherry didn't mind. She certainly hadn't hated Edonian food the last time she'd had a chance to try it, even if she didn't share Jake's views on the quality of American food.

They waited, making small talk, while the food arrived. Then Sherry waited a little more, mentally revising her assessment on Jake having eaten enough. He dug into the goulash like he hadn't eaten in a week.

Finally, however, she was able to seize a moment where his mouth wasn't full. "Jake, it's nice of you to take me out to dinner like this, but there's more to it than that, isn't there? What did you want to tell me?"

Amazingly and frustratingly enough, his response was to stall again. "I was surprised to hear you aren't with the NSA anymore. What happened with that? Had your fill of B.O.W's and viruses, super girl?"

"Of course not! I wanted to stay on with the NSA, but…"

"Office politics?"

"I guess so. Because I'd worked with Simmons, they decided I couldn't be trusted anymore. Not so much that they wanted to arrest me, or put me on trial. But…not enough to let me stay."

"That's rough, Sherry. If I'd known, I would have put in a good word for you."

"I know you would have. But…you weren't here. And they probably wouldn't have listened, anyway. So I'm just trying to keep going. Maybe I can't fight bioterrorism anymore, but protecting artwork and history…that's important too, right?"

"Sure it is." He was trying to hide a smile, but she could hear it in his voice. He didn't believe her, probably because she was having to fight to believe herself. "Well, if you're so happy where you are, maybe you don't want to hear what I've got to say at all."

"Jake!" She reached across the table and swatted him on the arm. "Quit beating around the bush! Of course I do!"

"Ow." He rubbed ruefully at the spot she'd just slapped. "Maybe you should stay where you are. Obviously, it's got you working out. Anyway," he added hastily, as she raised a hand threateningly. "I've actually been doing some work, signed on with the DSO. Ring a bell?"

"Leon's group?"

"Yeah. The BSAA, too." A shadow briefly passed over his face, and Sherry knew very well why. She was grateful to see it pass in less than a second, and then Jake was back to business. "Neo-Umbrella might finally be gone, but they've done a lot of damage, and there's still a lot of virus around. Relief workers need protection, J'avo cells need exterminating, C-virus caches need finding…I've been busy. So busy I've been thinking of…well, maybe taking on a partner."

"A partner?" Sherry was scarcely daring to breathe. She managed, however, to gesture to herself. "You mean me?"

"You know any other blonde badasses I should be hitting up?"

"Well, no, but…" Suddenly coming up against yet another fork in the road of her life had thrown her for a wide loop. Sherry felt dizzy.

"But nothing. It's what you want to do, right? Travel around the world delivering the vaccine to the poor and the downtrodden? Well, I want to fight bad guys, and I want to get paid. The way the world is shaping up, I think we can both get what we want for a good long while if we team up. The government wouldn't have to trust your loyalty, when we even bothered to work with them. They'd just have to trust you could get the job done. And you and I both know you can."

Even couched in Jake's usual cynical, smartass terms, it sounded like what she'd been wanting since the government had sent her on her way.

"That sounds wonderful, Jake." She stuck her arm out across the table, elated and made bold with finally having the promise of a future. A dangerous future, but one she could face with a friend by her side. "Partners?"

He shook her hand with a pretense at solemnity that did absolutely nothing to hide the happiness in his eyes. "Partners."

They celebrated by ordering more food, which Jake insisted on paying for. Talk turned to the future, the past, to plans and potential contacts and weaponry comparisons. All told, hashing out where they would go from here, together, lasted them through three courses and two hours. Sherry only realized how much time had passed when she looked up to order some dessert, and realized they were no longer the only people in the restaurant.

The knowledge, the realization that the world was still turning around them, prompted her to ask one more time as she motioned the waitress over.

"Jake…why me? I mean, I guess I was always hopping for something like this, but I thought you'd prefer to work alone."

Jake leaned back in his seat, his hands folded behind his head. This time, he didn't bother to hide his smile, and the fact that he was perfectly at ease with the world and perfectly content to wait until she was as well. "I always thought so, too. But the way I see it, you saved my life back then, super girl. I'm just returning the favor."

* * *

_This one was definitely the hardest to write, because it's the only one written outside the framework of the game. And it was definitely the most...peaceful. Continuing my attempt at gender equality, girl power, and role flipping, I wanted Jake's bit to be with him taking the traditionally feminine "emotional center" role. Just, you know, being Jake._ _This is definitely how I hope they wound up after the dust settled, honestly, so if nothing else, I love this one just because it's my favorite headcanon._ _I hope you enjoyed! I also hope you forgave that cheesy title drop at the end but, mostly, I hope you enjoyed. And I hope to write more of these two in the future along similar lines._


End file.
